Story #3: Big Lips, Fake Tits
A story about the assistants who keep them pumped full of plastic
Driving in LA isn’t driving. It’s an experiment in human endurance designed by Spencer V. Cortelyou who, I assume, was a sadist. I picture him somewhere in the afterlife, stuck in an endless line, still inching toward the pearly white gates, wondering if he should have been just a little less ambitious. Serves him right, fucker.
When I first moved here, my mom, sweet and hopeful, gifted me a GPS that might as well have been a Magic 8 Ball. That thing couldn’t navigate a straight line. The first time I used it, it failed completely and sent me straight into the one thing that makes people flee LA faster than earthquakes, taxes, or rising rent: traffic. What should have been an eleven-minute drive turned into brake-light purgatory. The ten-lane freeway stretched out like a concrete death trap. Within minutes, I was suffocated by panic and claustrophobia, like someone turned down the oxygen just to see what I’d do. So naturally, I’d take a job that required me to drive everywhere.
After working for The Producer, I bounced between second jobs that were an unholy mix of nanny, chef, and personal assistant. Some of the families were just burned out on the fantasy of having it all. The upkeep of their executive-level jobs, teenagers, car payments and mortgages hung from their eyes like wet laundry. Dining tables were buried under unopened mail, school projects, and half-eaten protein bars no one wanted to claim. Dog hair collected in every corner. The rugs were stained, the furniture chipped, but none of it mattered anymore. They were too tired to care. Too busy holding on for dear life, praying they’d make it until the youngest went to college and they could reclaim whatever life was left. The only expectation? The kids stayed alive and that there was something, anything, to eat when they got home.
And then there were the others.
The ones who needed to look wealthy, even while drowning in debt. Their houses weren’t lived in. They were curated to project affluence — coffee table books stacked for aesthetics, white furniture, and kitchens that never smelled like food.
The fridge was stocked with “kee-no-a,” and the car lease teetered on repossession. They wanted the optics of a well-oiled household—the kind with a full team handling every detail, but there was no team. There was just me, doing the job of five people, wondering why anyone would choose a life this complicated. And the more polished they wanted to look, the more chaotic my job became.
I didn’t just end up in these homes. I chose them. There was something familiar about the way people were holy in public and hell behind closed doors. When a job felt unstable or unpredictable, I didn’t flinch. I adjusted. I told myself it wasn’t that bad, that I could handle it.
Being a nanny/personal assistant/chef to a D-list wellness doctor who had near-psychotic determination to climb the Hollywood social ladder was the kind of toxic environment I was drawn to.
The pay seemed theoretical at best, but I was willing to take the gamble. I’ve never been one to let financial desperation get in the way of a terrible decision. If a job came with a maybe paycheck and a strong likelihood of crossed boundaries, I was in.
Maggie was a single mother, doing her best to hold it all together. Between clinging to past fame and managing the fallout of her personal life, control became her coping mechanism. Although she had given up alcohol, she still had all of the self-obsession, emotional volatility, and white-knuckle need-for-control of a full-blown addict.
I’d see the type over and over again. The ones who try to outrun a complete breakdown by micromanaging stupid shit, like finding the right collagen powder or having fresh flowers on the table, as if any of it prevents a collapse or hides their incompetence.
They were the ones who thought screaming and yelling made them important, and speaking down to people proved their intelligence.
She wanted to matter. She was trying to stay relevant in a world that rewards image over reality. Even when she wasn’t ranked ‘best’ on any list that mattered, she carved out a niche by making guest appearances on daytime talk shows, lifestyle segments, and late-night fluff pieces. But every time she smiled for the camera, I braced myself for the crash that came after the high.
Fame must be one hell of a drug because her pursuit for it didn’t just overshadow her ethics—it steamrolled them.
I didn’t look away. I stayed. Partly out of financial necessity, partly because I wanted to see how far she’d go, but it didn’t take long for the chaos to escalate. The smallest inconvenience set her off like a detonator.
The first time, it was dry-cleaning. The second I told her the cleaners lost it, she snapped. “FIND IT YOURSELF. CLOTHES ARE IMPORTANT.”
I did what any underpaid personal assistant with an inflated sense of loyalty might do: I climbed behind the counter and started rifling through every rack like a raccoon in a dumpster while the staff looked on, unsure whether to call the police.
Acting out on someone else’s behalf was fun. I’d never do something like that if they lost my dry cleaning. I’d just say, “Ok, well, let me know if you find it” and leave disappointed, pissed, and full of regret for having spent money on something that needed upkeep.
That joy ride came to an end when I arrived to the condo. I barely put the dry cleaning away before she spiraled into a full-blown breakdown on ‘priorities.’
First, the clothes. Her eyes bulged, neck veins throbbed as she jabbed at each item like I didn’t understand English.
“THIS. GOES. HERE. THESE. GO. HERE.”
Every word blasted loudly, landing on me like a lecture I’d apparently ignored. Except this was the first time she’d said any of it.
Second: the bed. It had to be made exactly like a reference photo. Because if she couldn’t afford the Four Seasons, she was damn sure going to sleep like she could.
Third, an endless supply of Diet Cokes and Black and Whites.
The kids? Somewhere in between the equestrian lessons and Zumba.
The first time I saw her bang on her laptop like a monkey, I thought she was joking. The screen froze, and instead of hitting Control + Alt + Delete like a functioning adult, she clenched her jaw, lifted both hands, and started hammering at the keyboard like it was a malfunctioning vending machine.
Did she think her rage would fix the internet? As she banged away, “I CAN’T…COME ON… WHAT IS… WRONG… WITH…THIS?”
She slammed it shut, tossed it at me, and it became my problem.
I took the laptop in to have it repaired. The IT guy refused to label it “Seek Therapy Before Hitting Me,” so the next week, we’d be back, cycling through it all over again.
At first, I sympathized. I learned in order to survive certain types of people, you had to find the humanity in them—even if you have to make it up. “She just wants to be taken seriously. She just doesn’t know any better. In her defense…to be fair…”
I should have clocked what I was getting myself into when the housekeeper whispered, “Oh, you must be good. You’re still here!”
I should have clocked her old assistant’s neurotic behavior. When I asked her what she was moving on to, she couldn’t maintain eye contact.
“An opening finally came up to pursue my dream of working with horses.”
What? Hired hands were hard to come by? Since when?
I should have walked out the door with her as soon as I thought, “Am I supposed to be frantic like her?” But I didn’t. I passed the interview and was chosen. That felt like it meant something.
Underneath my quiet exterior ran a deep sense of inadequacy. I’d been fired from every 9-to-5 job I ever had. Structure, rules, and office politics don’t reward honesty. They reward performance, and I didn’t know that was the game.
When I was hired, I twisted what should have been just a job into proving my self-worth.
I assumed her vacation meant I could go on vacation. Silly me. Her rapid-fire texts demanded I get to the condo, retrieve a package, and mail it to her son across the country. I reminded her I was out of state. Did she expect me to teleport back to LA as she micromanaged me from The Vineyard?
Her reply? “It’s IMPORTANT. It’s for my SON.”
Everything was IMPORTANT, which meant nothing was.
And the irony? While she fumed over a missing video game, she couldn’t grasp why her son was failing in school. “Why is HE FAILING? ARE YOU NOT CHECKING HIS HOMEWORK?”
When I took him to his parent-teacher conference, his teacher sighed, “I don’t want to explain this to another assistant. I’ve had this conversation too many times. Why is he even here?”
I looked at her, then the boy, before gesturing between us, “This is why. I shouldn’t be here.” I mean, what business did I have with child care? I could barely leave the house without a pep talk and a three-breath ritual. “You can do this. You can leave the house today. They’re just people.”
And now I was in charge of a child’s future?
You’d think that if school really mattered, she’d have hired a governess. Not outsourced childcare to a desperate stranger from an internet job board who barely graduated from high school.
I should’ve quit on the spot. Any sane person would have. But she was two weeks late paying me and desperate for help. She waved promises around like I cared about fame. TV appearances were lined up; she was working on a best-selling book; she was gonna to make it. “You’ll want to be around for it, won’t you?”
What book? What was she talking about? I never saw her write a word. Did she hire a ghost writer? Was she going to slap her name on the cover, take out a loan and buy eight thousand copies the week it was released?
But, instead of quitting, I said, “Oh… okay. Sure. That’s fine.” And dove right back in, driving the kids to an energy healer in Beverly Hills.
I expected crystals, pan flutes, maybe a white kaftan letting you know something overpriced was about to happen, but the place was surprisingly sterile. The room was set up with five massage tables lined up like we were at a psychic blood drive. One was already occupied by a woman sobbing her way to a brighter aura.
I sat there watching it all unfold. There was something admirable about the healer. God, even I hate saying that word. To have the confidence to charge $200 for spine booping magic? I was jealous.
Maggie frantically texted for updates, as if this one session might somehow fix all of us. “Oh yeah, this is cool! They’re fine!” Maybe it was fixing us. I was learning how to tell people what they wanted to hear. I was performing.
The end started with the pharmacy.
But not the time when she called and said “I need you to go to the pharmacy and pick up my prescription. It’s really bad today.”
When the pharmacist shouted, “Maggie, Valtrex, Maggie, Valtrex,” I had to step forward and claim it in front of a full line of people. I thought HIPAA prevented those kinds of announcements, but maybe I was wrong.
The stares weren’t subtle. Heads turned. There was something going on — not with me, but with the prescription.
When I got to my car, I Googled it. V-a-l-t-r-e-x.
Ah. Herpes?! Of course.
After that, the job requirement shifted. We moved beyond humiliation and onto breaking laws.
When I picked up “Blaire’s” medication, I thought I’d made a mistake. Another errand gone wrong. I didn’t want to ask her. Partly out of fear, but mostly because playing dumb felt safe.
I typed the name and date of birth into the home computer, and there it was—Blaire was a former assistant! The prescription? It wasn’t for Blaire. It was for Maggie! She couldn’t afford the anti-psychotics showing up in her medical records while she fought her ex in court.
Did she cling to her, “I have it together” act so hard she was willing to risk her medical license? Was I clinging to money so tightly that I was willing to look the other way? Or was my fear of letting someone down the real reason I kept orbiting abusive people?
Part of me understood her desperation. She clung to control the way I clung to approval. Both of us pretended we had more power than we did. Fear ran the show for both of us. I stayed because endurance was second nature.
When you want to be liked, you convince yourself you can handle just a little more. And then a little more after that. At some point, you mistake it all for stability.
That’s the secret to abuse. None of it registers as pain. It just becomes part of your day.
But people like me don’t set boundaries in real time. We absorb and adapt until one tiny cycle clicks back into place and puts all of the pieces together.
When she tried to take my personal time again, like it belonged to her, like I belonged to her?
The caged animal woke up.
I stared at my phone. My fingers hovered over the screen. I braced myself for the excuses, the deflections, the guilt trip that would twist everything back on me. But for once, I was pissed. The anger of her taking my personal time with her bullshit calcified into something sharper. All the thoughts I’d trained myself to filter cracked open.
I sent the text.
You scream about respect, but you treat everyone like shit. You preach accountability, but never take responsibility for your own fuck-ups. You’re not the FUCKING VICTIM. You’re a fucking hypocrite. I’m fucking done.
Her response came fast, first feigning concern. “Are you okay? This doesn’t sound like you.” Then, her true colors: “I’M HUMAN.”
I hated that phrase and the way people wield it, like existing absolves them of effort. It’s a cop-out, a spiritual shrug, a way to shift the burden so fast you don’t notice the roles flipping. Suddenly, the person who caused harm becomes the one who needs comfort.
But not today, bitch! Not today.
She could keep her designer clothes, her brand partnerships, her TV slots, and her curated life. But to me, her life will always be a malpractice of manipulation and lies.
In hindsight, I should have left the first time she threw a tantrum over a missing dress. Or maybe the second time. Definitely by the time she had me impersonating her to negotiate with the IRS.
But some people don’t just want employees. They want an audience. They need someone to witness their mess, absorb the madness, and validate their performance.
I used to think I was bad at these jobs, that I just couldn’t hack it. But looking back now, I wasn’t incompetent. I was just in the wrong place. I was naïve. A country girl, raised in a place where people, for the most part, had good intentions.
I thought sincerity and consideration were enough.
But with the wrong people, they’re not.
Sincerity and consideration only work if everyone’s playing by the same rules. The problem is, people like Maggie see kindness as an opening, patience as permission, and fairness as a weakness to exploit.
But those were the things that could never be negotiated, traded or sold no matter what it cost me.
They were the parts that anchored me to my parents. To love. To warmth. To who I was before the world tried to teach me otherwise. To who they were before the world got to them. And if anyone was going to own those parts, it was going to be me.
Credits:
Narrated by: Elaine T.
Sound Engineer: Max Lee
Written by: Anonymous Fork
Hot Tips:
Check out the hot tips from this story…
Follow us on instagram: @the.anonymousfork
Anonymous Fork's Substack is a reader-supported publication.
Join the discussion
What did you think?